


Nerve Agent

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: A reunion, a job, a mistake, and a swamp.The stuff all good adventures are made of.
Relationships: Cara Dune/Fennec Shand
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Nerve Agent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



The artefact was on Nevarro, and it seemed like an easy retrieve and return job. Some kind of relic, holy to an Outer Rim culture unheard of by any but its locals; stolen, uplifted, displayed in an Imperial officer’s mansion on Nevarro’s humid, globular magma falls. One more unbearable indignity inflicted by the Empire. One extremely surmountable obstacle to bringing in a new ally for the New Republic, to hope of warming a relationship colder than space. Fetch the artifact, return it to its people. Easy.

Cara took the job. Then she took Fennec too, because Fennec was in town and starved of entertainment; there were only so many spice barons they could take out before they either got bored or ran out barons. And they hadn’t gotten bored.

“Is this it?” Fennec asked. “It’s tiny. All that fuss, I could stick it in my pocket.”

Privately, Cara agreed. It was a piece of moss-like gemstone or tech, worn and greying in the way that rendered the two indistinguishable. Serpentine; coiled design. Small enough to fit in her palm, so she grabbed it from the shattered remains of its glass display case.

“Huh,” she said, squeezing. “It’s kind of warm. And…not solid? You ever feel anything like this?” She passed it over to Fennec, rubbing at the palm of her hand where the artefact’s echo lingered. It left behind a tingling, staticky buzz, like a dozen tiny needles dancing up her life line. There’d been no warning about that from the client. There’d been almost no information at all.

“We might have a problem,” Cara said, clenching her hand. When she opened it, her palm flushed a fevered, heated red. “This thing bites. Keep your gloves on, we don’t need it catching both of us out.”

“Some kind of Imperial trap, I bet.” Fennec rolled the artefact in her glove. It wasn’t spherical, but got close enough that the flaws provoked irritation; it bulged and dipped, resembling nothing Cara had seen before, but she couldn’t shake the impression of coils. She still couldn’t tell what it was made of. That was unsettling, though not as much as the pinprick tingle creeping up her wrist.

“Let’s go,” she said shortly. “Could just be a mild allergen, but I want med kits on standby. Come on.”

Fennec didn’t _come on_ right away; outside of battle, she went as she pleased. For Boba Fett she’d jump on command, but Cara had nothing on her. She moved to her own rhythm. “Are you seeing this?” she said, lifting the artefact to Nevarro’s grey light, peering like she peered down scopes and night vision binoculars. “It’s weird. I think it’s organic; low tech civ like our client couldn’t manufacture this. The shapes don’t make any sense.”

“Come _on_.”

“Give me a minute.”

Cara went. Back to their borrowed ship, some pile of junk she’d confiscated on Karga’s authority months ago and never quite gotten around to doing up. It flew. It held the basics; the guns and the med kits. It wasn’t a _Razor Crest_ , but only because it was worse. In the hold, Cara tripped on steel boxes and shelving she hadn’t yet assembled. She dinged her kneecap on one of the water tanks, cursed, and started wondering just how bad this allergen might be getting. She could feel something of its tingle in between the stabbing pains in her knee. The fact that she was tripping at all didn’t say good things.

Unless it just said she needed to tidy her ship. Paranoia could be a hell of a drug.

Fennec showed her sleek self a few minutes later. Cara didn’t look up at the metallic clatter of boots on deck; she was up to her elbows in bandages, making a mess of a med kit she hadn’t put back in order after her last scare, cursing her disinterest in housekeeping.

“You don’t have to say it; I know I’m an idiot. Shouldn’t have just grabbed that thing, whatever it is.”

“Well, that makes two idiots,” Fennec said calmly, sitting down on a crate at Cara’s side. She could be very still when she wanted; upright and stiff, the line of her back like the line of her rifle. She was often calm. But there was a note of force in her tone, the sharpness of it enough to distract Cara from her bandages and high-grade burn creams. She looked up. Found Fennec expressionless, staring a hole into the bulkhead opposite, the whites of her eyes veined with red.

“It got me too,” Fennec said. “In my eyes when I tried to look closer. Two idiots. How’s that med kit coming?”

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for. How bad is it for you?”

Fennec blinked a couple of times. “It’s not… _not_ bad. I’m dizzy, but I can walk. I can see just fine. I’m thinking nerve agent. Hard to be sure. You know anyone on Nevarro that might be able to help?”

“Not with unregistered tech like this.” Cara stood, turning to dump the useless med kit on the crate she’d been sitting on. Only thing in it that might help was the painkillers, and those were expired. She’d use them anyway if she had to, but not until she had to. “Or unregistered fungus, or…whatever. Dank farrik. Nobody said it might be dangerous.”

“The client should know,” Fennec said. She patted a sealed pouch at her side, reassuring them both that the thing was out of harm’s way. “Home world’s not far; it’s one system over, and we’re not too sick yet. Make them give us a cure with the payment.” She was like Cara, calmer with a plan in mind. Nodding to herself, she turned to the discarded med kit and started pulling bandages out.

Cara left her to it. In the cockpit, she woke the onboard navigation, charting a course for their client’s location. Oter. Outer Rim swamp world, no resources to speak of, no claim to fame aside from the dubious honour of a half-assed Imperial despoiling. Same claim as every other planet. She hoped their artefact was worth the hassle of retrieval. The gleaming lights on her nav control panel were a little blurred. Her chest was tighter than it should be, and her skin felt hot. Her hand stung slightly; she clenched it, bringing the closed fist down hard on the back of the pilot’s chair.

“That’s the price you pay for doing a good deed,” she muttered, and commanded her rust bucket ship to take flight.

Liftoff came with a rattle, the walls shaking like wind-whipped trees. The ship rose; beneath it, smooth grey volcanic rock and rough-hewn curvature of the mansion that had once housed an Imperial thief, and would one day sink back into the incandescent magma falls that surrounded it. Classic Imperial arrogance. A house like a tumour, sticking out of a mountain face, curtained by rivers of flame. The sooner it was swallowed, the better. It had probably been built on the profits of stolen goods like the one in Fennec’s pocket.

Cara poked her head down into the hold. “Strap in, we’re breaking atmosphere in two minutes.”

“Copy that.” Fennec lifted the med kit back onto its wall rack; bandages folded, diagnostics and creams neatly arranged, painkillers on top where they needed to be. She tied it down and reached for Cara’s hand, letting herself be pulled into the cockpit. It was an unsteady lift, but if she took the help then she wasn’t sure she could climb the ladder alone. Her eyes looked painful. Even through her leather glove, Cara could feel the heat of her. She wasn’t normally that warm. Neither of them were.

“Sorry,” Cara said as the magma falls faded out behind grey cloud cover. “Should have stuck to beating down spice dealers back in town.”

Fennec gave her a small, sharp smile. She was good at those. “This is more interesting.”

“Only until it kills us,” Cara said with a sigh, leaning back in the pilot’s seat and closing her eyes as the ship carved a fiery path up to space.

They had hours to fill on their upwards journey before they cleared enough of Nevarro’s atmosphere and air traffic to allow for a safe jump out of the system. Standard departure protocols. They seemed to drag a lot more than usual; sweat was starting to itch at Cara’s hairline and under her clothes, the air tasting staler by the minute. Fennec didn’t say a word. In the co-pilot’s chair, she lifted a hand, displaying an uncanny tremble. She shrugged.

Cara swore and fumbled her way back down to the hold.

“There’s nothing in the med kit,” Fennec called down to her. “I checked.”

“I figured,” Cara snapped. She stood in the hold, hands open, taking helpless inventory. Crates of weapons she was only somewhat entitled to carry. Empty storage she hadn’t had time to fill. The med kit she should have replaced. Dizziness bad enough that she found herself leaning on the side of the hull, then slumping heavily down to the floor.

“We’re definitely poisoned,” she said, to reassure herself that she was still capable of talking. That seemed fine. Her legs didn’t work so well, but the bulkhead was cold, a blessing against the back of her head.

“I know,” Fennec sat down next to her, folding her legs with more grace than Cara could have managed on any given day. She had a luminous blue bottle in one hand. Cara had no idea when she’d had time to find it, or even where it had been. “I think we might actually be dying. Shots?”

There weren’t really any better options, Cara reflected, taking the bottle of spotchka.

It helped a little, or at least made the problem easier to ignore. The autopilot had navigation taken care of; what else were they going to do? Cara leaned back against the bulkhead, her arm pressed against Fennec’s, rebel stripes and black leather sleeve. Cute contrast. She still had enough focus in her to appreciate the simple things.

Fennec nodded at the stripes, and then at Cara’s cheekbone. “I’ve always liked your tattoos,” she said. “One for sorrow, one for rage?”

“Something like that.”

“You got any others?”

“No.” Cara took the bottle from her, spotchka luminescence bathing their fingers, their battered knuckles. The bottle was as cold as the liquor. Klatooinians slugged it with dry ice; they’d drink all night and wake with hangovers and frostbitten tongues. Not a good look. Not that she was one to judge. She drank until her throat seized tight with cold. It helped.

“I thought about getting some.” Fennec stretched her boots out, pointing her toes; the bones clicked. Her cheeks were too flushed. “Flowers, maybe. One for every successful job. And then I realised I’d run out of skin too fast, so I’d have to quit either the work or the tattoos, unfinished. Both would have annoyed me. So I never bothered.”

“You have cybernetics,” Cara said. She could hear them faintly, in between the incessant shipboard sounds, the automated beeps and rattles of ill-secured cargo. Little squeaks like mice in walls. The silicone pulse of a new set of guts. It was kind of fun. Lively in a way tattoos weren’t.

Fennec gave her squeaking abdomen a friendly pat. “And they’re eating me out of house and home. Costs a fortune to keep these babies running.”

“So that’s why you took this job so fast. I thought you just couldn’t get enough of me.”

“Yeah, you’re almost as cute as my credit balance was going to be. You know, before I started dying.”

“Hey, I offered up all my local spice runners,” Cara said. “Not my fault Nevarro’s too clean to be fun these days.”

“It kind of is your fault.”

The spotchka changed hands. Sweat drew lines down the back of Cara’s neck; there was a glazed look to Fennec’s eyes. A damp strand of hair stuck to one of her cheeks. Cara pushed it back behind her ear, and found herself briefly captivated by the red cord in her braids. There had to be some kind of meaning to it. She’d never asked. They’d only recently stopped being total strangers.

“Why _did_ you come to Nevarro, anyway?” she asked, touching one of the braids with a fingertip. It figured that Fennec would have the patience to do them all herself. Snipers were a whole other breed. “We’re not exactly known for our tourism.”

“I was getting twitchy on Tatooine. Needed a break. Wanted to see if we still had chemistry.”

“Huh.”

“Your tits are amazing.”

“Oh yeah,” Cara said. “Trust me, I know.”

“You realise you’re still touching my hair, right?”

She was, Cara noticed. Running her fingers over the braids, lost in how they felt. The only thing that felt really clear to her in the moment, and she was no longer sure if she should blame that on the spotchka or the poison. “Sorry. It’s nice.”

“I’m good with it,” Fennec said, handing the spotchka back.

They drank, and the poison didn’t kill them.

Eventually Oter loomed large on the hull’s grainy viewing panel, a mud-streaked artist’s palette of rotting vegetation, grim stone caves, murky shit-water. The rain-washed plateaus might never have seen a sun. It was a damp, dreary planet, and Cara was done with it before the autopilot negotiated a wet landing. Her ship sank alarmingly before finding some solid underlayer of dirt to support it. Visibility was low outside; the humidity was choking.

Lingering spotchka ice kept the poison’s heat at bay, but still Cara stagged out onto the lowered ramp into the rain, hoping it would cool her off enough to let her think. There was somewhere they needed to be. She was so much more dazed without Fennec right next to her.

“This way,” Fennec said, appearing behind her, tracker in hand. “Hurry. It’s getting bad.”

“I’m with you.”

They trudged. The water came halfway up their shins; rain left them sodden, overheating, leaning on each other for balance. The little red light on the tracker blinked a steady, reassuring rhythm. Cara kept an arm around Fennec’s waist. It helped. She wasn’t sure how. It made things clearer. They had to stay close. They had to-

Her knees hit the mud, water soaking her thighs, her hands as she tried to break her own fall. It had happened so suddenly; she didn’t remember losing balance. The blue-ice spotchka was mostly worn off, washed out by the tropical rain. She was too hot. Her skin felt like it could boil the waters.

“I can’t get up,” she said numbly. That was new. That wasn’t her. She’d never found herself stopped like this; never during a mission, never during a job. A stalled Dropper died fast, and no one had killed her yet. She fumbled at the catches on her breastplate. Let the heat out. Get some air. Get up and keep moving.

Fennec knelt at her side, helping with the pauldrons, the gauntlets, then starting on her own. “Too hot,” she said pointlessly, then stopped to stare at her own trembling hands as if she didn’t recognise them. Cara took care of her gloves. Took her bare hands, trying to steady them.

She felt a lurch; goosebumps breaking out on her skin, and an internal shiver in the depths of her abdomen. Her lungs went tight. She looked up, meeting Fennec’s eyes, which were suddenly a lot less dazed, narrowed with suspicion.

“Oh, okay then,” Fennec said. “So _that’s_ all it is.”

“Yeah, we’re just dying, no big deal-”

Fennec gave a sharp smile. “First time? Relax, I know what we’re dealing with here. I’ll fix it. Trust me.”

They barely knew each other, except in the sense that they’d fought their way through remnant Empire dregs together, which was all the knowing Cara had ever needed from anyone. She trusted Fennec to cover her when her gun jammed. To shoot the targets she missed. If there was another kind of trust, she’d never met it.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you gotta do, go for it.”

“Copy that,” Fennec said, and kissed her.

The lurch became a full-body shudder, a flush that stung every nerve ending Cara had; she made a choked, furious sound against Fennec’s mouth as realisation set in.

Alien aphrodisiac. Obviously. With her luck, what else could it possibly be?

“I’m such an idiot,” she muttered in the spaces between Fennec’s lips, her tongue, hands already pulling at the other woman’s ridiculous leathers. Rain and swamp water stuck them fast. She grabbed instead for Fennec’s hips, squeezing handfuls of her ass.

“Only sometimes,” Fennec said. “Mostly you’re just hot. Are we doing this or do you just want to die in this swamp?”

They fumbled for each other in the mud, with the rain trailing down their cheeks and shoulders, the drug searing them up from the inside, sparking internally where they touched. Fennec’s hands under Cara’s shirt, pushing at the sodden cloth, giving in and tearing it open. She grabbed for Cara’s tits; left muddy handprints and laughed, dropping her head to kiss Cara’s nipples.

The surge of heat was so intense it left Cara senseless for a second. The rain pooled on her eyelashes. She no longer cared.

Giving up any hope of stripping Fennec’s clothes away, Cara settled for tugging her pants down mid-thigh and pushing a hand between them. Her hands were already wet, her fingers sliding easily into Fennec’s heat, tingling to the second knuckle. She felt Fennec breathe hard against one of her nipples. Pushed her fingers deeper. Spread her legs as one of Fennec’s trembling hands fumbled between them.

There was mud all over her face, and Fennec’s. Smeared across her chest in the shape of hands and Fennec’s lips. Cara kissed her again; she tasted the tingle of spotchka.

She rode every twist of Fennec’s fingers where they pressed inside her. It was graceless, messy, rushed. The alien heat sloughed off them as they moved. They left each other senseless, but healed. The last of the drug burned out in an open-mouthed kiss, stroking each other to completion.

And then it was just them and the swamp.

“Son of a mud scuffer,” Cara said, blinking rain out of her eyes, tugging her shirt back into place. “That thing’s some kind of…sex drug?”

Fennec shrugged. She held her hands up to the rainfall, washing them clean. “Yeah. Fertility artefact, probably. I’ve seen it before.”

“I’m going to _murder_ the client.”

“Take the money first,” Fennec said serenely. “Get paid, then get even.”

“Oh, I’m getting even alright.”

“You’re not getting anything if you keep sitting around in the mud all day.” Standing, Fennec offered a hand to pull Cara upright. She was still too calm, too smug for all the rain and sickly swamp water drenching them both. The whole situation seemed funny to her.

It was a little bit funny, Cara had to admit. Funnier now she didn’t feel seconds away from death. There were mud streaks in Fennec’s hair; her own was a lost cause. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d messed a job up quite this badly.

They didn’t even need to stand around getting wet. There were waterproofs on the ship. She had no idea how she’d forgotten.

Damp, slathered in mud and sticking to her clothes, Cara started to laugh. “Still more fun than beating up Nevarro spice runners?” she asked.

Fennec grinned, small and sharp. “I always have fun with you.”

They turned back to the tracker, trudging on into the swamp.


End file.
